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  • CAREER FEATURE

PhDs: the tortuous truth

Nature’s survey of more than 6,000 graduate students reveals the turbulent nature of doctoral research.
  1. Chris Woolston

    1. Chris Woolston is a freelance writer in Billings, Montana.

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Getting a PhD is never easy, but it’s fair to say that Marina Kovačević had it especially hard. A third-year chemistry student at the University of Novi Sad in Serbia, she started her PhD programme with no funding, which forced her to get side jobs bartending and waitressing. When a funded position came up in another laboratory two years later, she made an abrupt switch from medicinal chemistry to computational chemistry. With the additional side jobs, long hours in the lab, and the total overhaul of her research and area of focus, Kovačević epitomizes the overworked, overextended PhD student with an uncertain future.

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Nature 575, 403-406 (2019)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-019-03459-7

References

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